This compelling map, brought to public attention again by Edward
Tufte, was drawn by French engineer Charles Joseph Minard to depict the
crushing defeat of Napoleon's army as it first marched on and then
retreated from Moscow in the winter of 1812-13. The combination of human
drama, multivariate information, and minimal extraneous data all
enhance its effect. As Tufte notes, "It may be the best statistical
graphic ever drawn."

Snow's plot of
cholera cases against pump locations, London, 1854

John Snow,
Queen Victoria's anaesthesiologist, is widely credited with contributing
to the advancement of public health and discerning the germ theory of
disease through his visualization of the incidence of cholera cases in a
particular London neighborhood and plotting those on a "dot map" of cases
and their location in relation to pumps. When the handle was removed from
the Broad Street pump, the number of cases fell dramatically. But, as
Tufte notes in his latest book (Visual Explanations, 1997, Graphics
Press), the issue may not be that simple. Snow's graphic fell short on a
number of counts, especially that of comparing incidence of the
disease with the size of the population in given neighborhoods.
Nonetheless, Snow did figure out the relationship between contaminated
water and cholera incidence, and this depiction played a role.

From Maurice Rickards' Posters of the First World War (New
York: Walker & Co., 1968 [out of print])

Jules Abel Faivre's "On les aura!" ("We'll get 'em!")

The romantic image of war as an innocent contest among idealistic youth is
captured supremely in this 1916 example from France, which not
coincidentally also encourages the viewer to subscribe
to the Second National Defense Loan. Similar messages from later in the
war played down youthful valor and emphasized steadfastness,
determination, and heroic suffering in the face of nearly unbearable
conditions.

Fred Spear's
Enlist [following the sinking of the Lusitania,
1915]

The power of images to trigger emotions was used extensively by British
and American artists during World War I, especially in ways that made the
German opponents seem like animals or sub-humans. This example, drawing as
it does on feelings of protectiveness toward mother and child, and pairing
these with the revulsion at the sinking of a British liner on which
American neutrals were passengers, was especially potent in the American
context. Rickards calls it "perhaps the most powerful of all war
posters."

Joseph Pennell
depicts the
Statue of Liberty in ruins following German bomber and submarine
raids

Here again, the possibility of war coming to American shores is played for
maximum effect by showing the imagined destruction of a cherished national
symbol. In the early years of this century, that possibility might have
seemed especially horrendous to a population that still included a large
number of first-generation immigrants who had themselves seen the Statue
on arrival in New York. Or perhaps the artist was trying to use this
suggestion as a way of emphasizing the need for all Americans to unite
against a "common" enemy. As "For Your Country," a popular song of the
period stressed,

"Now it matters not from where you
came,We are
all the same!"

J. C. Leyendecker's Boy Scout offering sword to revivified
Statue

At last, liberty resurgent, we are treated to the pure spirit of America's
youth enlisted in the effort to sell war bonds. Note the combination of
symbols: the Statue herself, clad in the flag, shielded by the national
seal, and taking up a sword engraved with the Boy Scout motto.